The archive · Design & Visual · Strategic decision · 2020–2022
Kama-Asa shop interior exposes hidden steel bars and uses noren curtains as signage
Kama-Asa kitchen-tool shop turned its own walls into the exhibit: deformed steel bars exposed, and three scales of noren curtain as signage.
Kama-Asa
What it had to solve
KAMA-ASA sells kitchen tools made by craftsmen, on the belief that good tools exist for a good reason. The shop wanted customers to meet that skill, so the interior itself had to communicate Japanese tradition and artisanal manufacturing.
How it works
KAMA-ASA is a shop built on the policy of 'good tools with a reason', delivering to customers the superb skills of the craftsmen who make kitchen utensils. The space had to carry that same message, so the design chose to make the shop's own construction visible as craft.
The design emphasised the skills of architectural craftsmen by highlighting the deformed steel bars that would normally be hidden inside walls, turning the building's hidden structure into the interior's main feature.
Signage was designed around the noren, the traditional Japanese shop curtain. A large noren hangs outside, a medium noren represents the product, and a small noren invites customers in, so the shop uses a familiar street form to guide people from entrance to goods.
Together the exposed construction and the layered noren make the entire shop communicate Japanese tradition and the artisanal manufacturing of craftsmen. The work was filed in D&AD's awards archive under Spatial Design.
Why it lands
- Exposing the deformed bars shows a second kind of craftsmanship — the building's — that customers would never otherwise see.
- The noren is already the universal Japanese sign for a shop, so scaling it large, medium and small teaches the route through the store without words.
- The interior and the merchandise tell the same story, so the space itself becomes the shop's first argument for buying handmade tools.
- Both moves use honest, ordinary materials rather than decoration, matching the belief that good tools exist for a good reason.
What it did
From the street to the shelf the store tells one story: the architecture shows how the building was made, while the layered noren lead customers through the shop, communicating Japanese tradition and craftsmen's manufacturing. The work was filed in D&AD's awards archive under Spatial Design.
What you can take
A shop selling craft can make its own architecture the exhibit: exposed bars and layered shop curtains prove the craft before a single product is handled.
Since then
The Kama-Asa shop interior was designed around exposed deformed steel bars and a three-scale noren signage system, so the building and the goods communicated the same craft story. The work was filed in D&AD's awards archive under Spatial Design, where the entry describes the shop as a space that communicates Japanese tradition and craftsmen's manufacturing.
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